by Zoe Whittall
I slip into the delicate silver ankle boots that match my gown. Pull on a wool cardigan and head out towards the Sun Youth building on St-Urbain that’s being used as a polling station. I watch my feet as they step along, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, old habit. It’s like every other day this week, really grey and hazy. A day for depression and headaches where it almost rains and then decides not to.
In the voting booth I notice my boots are scuffed, might need a new coat of silver spray paint. I have what feels like several thousand pieces of id stuffed in my bra and this makes me scared. I am concerned that everyone seems to be functioning normally — not like today could change the course of my entire life.
I mark an X.
I run home. I don’t know why. Do you ever just need to see how fast you can go? I want it to pour. I want something to happen, fast, and I guess I’ll have to make that movement myself.
I slam the door of my apartment shut and breathe heavily against it, as if I’ve been chased. I spend the rest of the afternoon on an art project, ignoring the world outside my room.
After the polls close, I sit on the living room couch, on the phone with my mother. We both keep the cbc news on. Rachel makes a pumpkin pie, cutting herself with the can opener and sucking at the cut as she continues to dish out purée into a yellow plastic bowl. She talks fast because she is nervous, even though I am clearly on the phone. Won’t it be weird, you know, if we separate, I mean, like, will I go to work tomorrow? Will there be a riot? Do you remember the last time we were in a riot and I was on painkillers for my wisdom tooth and I thought it was all a video game? Remember? God, it would be fucking awesome if I didn’t have to work tomorrow. Do you want pie? I’m so hungry.
Within half an hour of the polls closing, yes was at fifty-six percent.
That’s still only one percent of the vote, explains Rachel.
I nod as though I’ve also done the math so as not to appear as ignorant about our electoral process as I actually am.
Call-waiting beeps. I say a quick goodbye to my mother. Della’s calling from a pay phone. Her voice is a sour glaze.
“Viens ici, tu me manques,” she says. I get another jolt of excitement about our new-found monogamy. I follow her breathy command, like Ms. Pac-Man chewing up those idiotic white dots.
Rachel rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what you see in her.”
“She asked me to be monogamous!”
“Really?” Rachel shrugged. “Sounds like it’s getting serious.”
I didn’t like how good it felt that monogamy was somehow legitimizing our relationship, but I did feel reassured. Like it confirmed to the people outside of us what was happening, that we were not just some casual fling, too different in age. I wasn’t just some conquest or amusement. I was Della’s primary girlfriend. I felt like someone had given me a firm role, a business card, a definite place.
Della is at SKY, a queer bar on Ste-Catherines. I can hardly hear her through the phone, there’s so much audible revelry. It sounds exciting. Her voice strings together sentences and laughter.
I get on my bike and peddle south fast in the cold drizzle, the charged air begging for a downpour. My silver dress is almost getting caught in the spokes at every push down of my boot but I don’t stop to tie the skirt into a tidy knot at my thigh. I’m a silver pinball bouncing against curbs, averting car doors by fractions of seconds, the yells of angry pedestrians like the high-pitched pings signalling points, speeding through yellow lights, a little out of my head.
I glide down Pine Avenue and turn right onto St-Denis. The streets are pretty empty but the bars look full. I feel like a tourist twisting east. My knuckles are raw from the cold as I chose to keep my outfit uniformly silver, uninterrupted by the usual fingerless gloves. By the time I get to Beaudry I feel deflated, not the confident pinball from the Plateau but a rain-soaked minnow, muddied gills uncertain, gasping for oxygen. I think I might be developing asthma. I push my bike up onto the sidewalk, I lock it up against a post.
I am greeted by a wall of smoke and a crowd as thick as cold butter. I cough immediately even though I’ve moved up to a deck a day. Definitely asthma. A drag queen, Mado, is wearing a shirt made of glow-sticks and is standing on the bar yelling cheers, revving up the crowd.
I make my way towards Della, who is sitting with her half-smirk, semi-eyelid smile. She kisses me on the mouth, pinches my cheeks, slips a hand under my skirt and up my thigh. I stay quiet, smiling wide.
Della’s brother smiles at me and winks, Salut Eve! xxxx and her new wife, Isabelle, a quiet butch who used to be my gym teacher in high school, are sitting together like a two-coloured knitted scarf. They greet me with a unified Hey. The room is warm and inviting and I don’t feel unwelcome at all, even though I definitely feel a little like an imposter, like I have a neon sign across my chest that says SPY.
Della calls Isabelle xxxx’s purse. She really is quiet, an accessory to xxxx’s whimsical personality, but I wonder if that is jealousy talking. I’m pretty sure they’re monogamous now, which is a source of both amusement and relief for me.
I give Isabelle some flirty eyes, almost by accident. I’m just so relieved that she exists, a physical barrier between Della and xxxx, that I treat her like an adorable kitten, someone who makes me coo. I don’t think she knows what to do with me. Sometimes she looks at me like I caught her stealing, caught her being a big gay lord, like I may just run back to my suburban high school and tell everyone what they already suspect anyway. I remember calling other girls lezzies in grade seven, saying, You’re just like Miss Boucher! Boucher the Bull Dyke. I can’t believe we’re across from each other, nothing odd about it.
I try to light a cigarette but my lighter is empty. I click and click nervously, sighing.
“Cherie,” says xxxx, reaching out to touch my hand across Isabelle’s lap, handing me her Zippo. “I have a dress for you. Long, red. I think you’ll like it. It’s too small for me.” She runs her hands over her D-cups as explanation. I blush. She has recently taken to calling me pet names, like an older sister might. She’s also taken to giving me hand-me-downs, offering me cigarettes, and catching my eye whenever a butch says something dumb about girls. Solidarity, she’ll whisper, and squeeze my hand.
I’m not sure what to do about it, so I mostly just smile. I am definitely over any attraction, working on the heart-seizing jealousy. I’ve moved up some points. The crowd is really warm, people are excited. I down two pints and feel a part of everything.
“We’re Quebeckers!” Eric whispers to me. “You don’t have to look so scared, Eve. We disagree and we talk about things, we drink!” He clinks his glass against mine and smiles wide. I take a breathless sip of beer and think, Fuck the two solitudes bullshit.
I relax. I start to feel a sense of calm. I look at Della in a swoon. She looks away.
There’s something about her demeanour, she can shift so quick. I anticipate it. Now all I can think is: What will she do? What do I have to prepare for?
I ask Della if she wants to walk to the corner store for some snacks so we can be alone for a minute. In French she snaps at me for not being committed to the cause. She hardly ever speaks in French to me since she knows I’m not totally fluent. The energy shifts.
I guess a moment passes, a long moment, it dissolves into my blushing cheeks. I don’t want snacks anymore anyway.
She translates slowly, like I’m retarded, and slurs, I can’t be in love with someone who is apolitical, slamming her beer down on the table like an exclamation point.
“Everyone has a politic. Even not having a politic is a politic,” I snap, flicking xxxx’s lighter to an open flame, slowly lighting my cigarette to show her comments don’t affect me. My cheeks continue to burn, betraying me.
“Besides, you sit at home while I’m out protesting! You don’t even call to see if I’m in jail.”
“I really don’t think Taking Back the Night or picketing the pro-lifers for the fiftieth time is really sticking i
t to the man, darling. You’re just walking around in circles, literally.”
People start to stare. I’m definitely the only anglo in the bar. I switch to French.
Mado is yelling something funny, everyone laughs except me because I don’t catch the meaning. I fake it with a hearty guffaw that turns into a choking cough. I blush some more.
Isabelle says, in French, “Easy, Della, you’ve had a lot to drink.” I note Isabelle has no discernable accent in French or English.
Jealousy: 10
Me: -10
“That’s beside the point, she will never love me right.”
Like I’m not even there, like I’m one of the talking heads on the TV. I understand her perfectly, I will never love her right. Della’s brother looks like he has no idea what’s going on. He watches Mado who is now telling everyone not to give up! But it’s clear what the results are going to be. She’s telling everyone that it doesn’t matter what the results are, we’re still us! We’ll still be queer tomorrow! The crowd is beginning to look visibly disappointed. I firm my face completely off, betray nothing, my eyes dimming headlights. Nothing is certain yet but it’s not looking good for yes.
I get up and turn towards the door. I walk slowly, feigning calm indignance. xxxx follows me through the crowd. She stands in the archway of the door, a hard rain burns me as I unlock my bike. “She’s just wasted, and an asshole. I mean, you know how it goes. She’s so passionate about Quebec, it’s like everyone English is an enemy.”
“Whatever,” I wipe the seat of my bike with the ends of my skirt. “She’s English, too. What about her mom?”
“You can never understand this, Eve. You just can’t. You act like it’s silly, some cause she’s committed to this week.”
“No, I don’t! I try to understand, I do, intellectually I understand.”
“Why haven’t you learned to speak French any better than you do? I’ve heard you speak it, you can do it. You just ...”
“I get shy. I sound stupid.”
“Well, she notices. And it’s important to her. But the point I was going to make coming out here is, well, she’s an asshole right now. You deserve better, Eve. You’re so ...”
“Young?” Maybe if I say it with a smirk she’ll note I’m smarter than she thinks I am.
“No, well yeah, but I meant to say ... submissive.”
“I’m not submissive!”
“Yes, you let her walk all over you.”
“No, no, I don’t.”
xxxx smiles, gives me an awkward hug. “You deserve better and you should stand up for yourself. But maybe today, tonight, you should realize that you being anglo is hard. It’s weird for her. You know, the two solitudes thing.”
I want to scream, “But you’re from fucking Westmount! My mother could’ve been your father’s secretary! Stop pretending to be some poster girl for the worker’s party!”
Instead I say, “What about you and Isabelle? She’s English. She teaches gym at my old high school!”
“Yeah, but I don’t care. I see both sides. And it’s really not an us-against-them thing, for most Quebeckers. Della just gets so ... divisive, about everything in her life. And oh, I’ve always wanted to ask you this, Isabelle told me it’s impossible that you are twenty, how old are you really?”
“I’m nineteen ...”
“Uh huh.” xxxx smiles at me, likes she’s proud of my deceiving skills.
Or perhaps it’s condescending. Another way she talks down to me.
I tug the lock off fast and get on my bike, stare at her body retreating into the bar. I note she’s wearing one of those ridiculous baby-sized backpacks. Even though it’s made of black rubber it still looks stupid. I begin to peddle home so fast. I feel armless. I press play on my walkman and hear Kathleen Hanna’s voice yelling, “Rebel girl, rebel girl.” I stop halfway up the hill, breathing hard and coughing up, lungs failing me. I am completely soaked. A sponge of grey, wet air. Little girl. My walkman falls out into traffic as I’m speeding ahead, I turn to see it get crushed to its death beneath a bus tire. I yell to no one in particular and swerve into a parked car and lose my balance, press my cold palms against it to steady myself. The crazy man outside the bus station stops talking to himself long enough to stare at me with a questioning look.
I press on ahead and with every stop outside a bar or store the song “Wonderwall” comes out of every speaker. I want to throw rocks at them. I hate that it’s our song. It’s everyone’s song. We’re so predictable.
6
•••
FIFTY POINT SIX PERCENT NO/N
Rachel finds me under a fort of wool blankets on the couch, peels back the layers of heavy plaid and off-white. I groan dramatically. She pushes her thick black glasses up her nose and looks at me curiously in a squint, pulling more covers back, revealing my full body splayed in the wet silver dress. She hands me a plate of warm pie awkwardly, which I know is Rachel’s way of communicating caring or nurturing; she’s like one of those scientist types who can’t handle any excess of emotion. We watch the final numbers. I take a bite of pie and it burns the top of my mouth, but I swallow anyway. Everybody looks feverish. Sweaty, half-standing.
Seven emerges from his room in a red cape and booty shorts trimmed with white piping. His shirt says Fey!
“Are we going to go riot as a family?” He swoops onto the couch, cuddling up next to me with his legs curled up under him, hands tenderly squeezing my tense shoulders. His warm body is a welcome salve to my numbness. He kisses my cheek and sighs, continues to massage his thumbs into my back, his fingers in the valley between my shoulder blades. My attraction to him is unquestionable and interrupts all essentialist notions I have about my true sexual orientation. Jenny and I were fag hags before we were lesbians. “The fashion is better,” she noted when we went to see the Cure shortly after an Indigo Girls concert. It was after that I deduced that I was attracted to girly boys and boyish girls, or girls who later became boys. Boys were always going to be part of the equation.
“What did you vote?” Seven asks, taking his hands away to light a cigarette. I don’t answer. Gertrude Stein scratches the sofa leg and meows.
“I voted no, of course, I hope you did, too,” Seven says, not really noticing I hadn’t answered his question. “I mean, what if it’s hard to get drugs over the wall they build? All we’ll have is pcp from the bikers and weak granny weed. That’s just not healthy. We need easy flow between BC and Quebec to avoid calamity.”
Rachel snorts. “Seven ...” Rachel is critical of anyone who doesn’t get involved in the issues, read the paper, keep upto-date on things. But she doesn’t expect much from Seven. She allows him to live in his circle of delusion, as she’s dubbed it.
“I voted no.” Rachel announces. “I feel somewhat uncomfortable about it.”
Rachel always speaks about politics like she’s giving a media interview. She won’t just say she feels kinda fucked-up about it, she’s “somewhat uncomfortable.”
All week we’ve been privy to her debates. Her antioppression-based politics called into question in the voting booth, because should she not ally herself with the independence of an oppressed group? Should she not support the workers? She threw a mug against the wall a few weeks ago and yelled, Everyone’s a power-hungry, money-grubbing motherfucker, no one deserves to win anything!
Rachel’s parents are English, from the Eastern Townships. Her family had lived there on the same farm for over a hundred years. Every year English kids left for other cities across Canada to go to school. Only a handful returned to farming. Even with all that emotional investment, no one could survive, let alone thrive.
“Why?” I asked. I was pretty sure she was going to vote yes last time we discussed it.
Rachel paused. “I was going to vote yes. I really was. I want it to happen if it’s going to happen, but ...”
I expected her to say I just don’t want things to change, I want to stay in Canada, I don’t want any chaos.
> “But they refused to meet with Native leaders about the future of Quebec, they refused to meet with leaders of the immigrant communities, they just didn’t seem to have much of a strategy for what would happen after yes came through ...”
“But, essentially you believe in separatism.”
“I believe in sovereignty, Eve. There’s a big difference for me.” Rachel leaned back in her chair with her arms behind her head, her tiny arms looking even smaller than usual. Her unharnessed boobs trying to poke through her thin, grey 7-Year Bitch T-shirt like little nails.
We turn to an audible commotion on the black and white TV. The votes are in. No is confirmed — barely. I finally feel something: relief. This strange and solemn sense of calm that nothing will change. Echoed in my mother’s voice on the phone immediately after it’s confirmed. “Thank God.”
How can anything really be that close?
I think about my single X, the one I was sure wouldn’t matter all that much in the big picture.
One of Seven’s lovers arrives at the door, greeted by a sense of anticlimax and uncertainty engulfed by our three bodies in the living room. He is wearing so much CK One cologne I can hardly breathe. We disperse into our rooms. I sit in my window seat, the only sound is the pulsing house music from Seven’s room vibrating the walls, making me feel shaky. I chain-smoke and drink tea, watch for any sign of upheaval on the streets. It’s distinctly quiet when I go to the corner store at St-Urbain to buy more smokes, try to sweet-talk my way into buying a single can of beer even though it’s after 11:00 p.m. It works. The store owner thinks Della is a little boy. Every time she comes in with me to buy groceries he acts like she’s such a cute kid buying eggs for her big sister in the morning. It’s hilarious. I look into the faces of people walking their dogs, standing on their stoops, wondering what 50.6 percent no and 49.4 percent yes looks like. Looks like the same thing. No one east of Atwater Street has the guts to look relieved.
